The Housing and Planning Act 2016

Starter Homes and Proposed amendments to the NPPF in the Housing White Paper

Readers will recall that the Government introduced provisions in the Act to promote the building of “starter homes”. The provisions are not yet in force but the Government has been consulting on the detail as to how the proposal will work in practice.

The Government has stepped back from its original proposal to impose a mandatory requirement on local authorities to deliver a certain number of starter homes. The Housing White paper proposes instead amending the definition of “affordable housing” in the NPPF to include starter homes and affordable private rent housing and the Government has indicated that it wants local authorities to work with developers to deliver a range of affordable housing products which could allow tenants to become homeowners over a period of time. If the amendments are made the Government then expects local authorities to consider the need for starter homes and private rented accommodation in plan making.

To support the delivery of more affordable homes to buy the Government is proposing to amend the NPPF to make clear that local authorities should seek to ensure that a minimum of 10% of all homes on individual sites of 10 units or more (0 .5 + hectares) are affordable home ownership products (this would include starter homes and shared ownership housing).